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Does defense justify torture?

Does defense justify torture?

  • Total voters
    49
Guy Incognito said:
Lying isn't a sin in and of itself. There is a Biblical prohibition against telling malicious lies (bearing false witness), but nothing about "white lies." I would speculate that Jesus would strongly encourage telling a lie to save a child.
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so - unless you don't value honesty - you are willing to violate your principles.

Torture, however, is another matter altogether.
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no, it's not; what we are discussing here is a matter of competing values. no one is claiming that torture is a moral positive, or even morally neutral.

Somebody needs to keep reminding you guys that bottom line is you are defending torture. Torture!
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i'm aware of that, more aware i think than you are. you've never had to help provide medical aid to a torture victim. (well. 'victim'. more like counter-recipient.) someone needs to keep reminding you guys that in some cases the alternative is lots of dead children. murdered children. and someone needs to keep reminding you that as far as ethics are concerned, you are just as responsible for the results of your inaction as you are for the result of your action.
 
Diogenes said:
Not at all. Extreme situations can require extreme measures which would not be considered in more normal circumstances.
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Extreme situations are why we have policy in the first place. The State should not have a policy condoning torture when it condemns others for engaging in it.
 
Viktyr Korimir said:
The State should not have a policy condoning torture when it condemns others for engaging in it.
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Absurd. The US, and the rest of the world, condemns Iran for jailing people yet we all jail people. Why? Because they do it without justification. One CAN condemn someone for doing something that they themselves do - if the condemned do it without justification.

This is obvious. How could you have even wrote the above quote? By your logic, there should be no arrests allowed in the US because we condemn others for it.
 
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disneydude said:
and obviously you don't understand what values/ethics/integrity means.
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Reallly...
OK - lay out the moral/ethical argument that leads to the conclusion that to not torture someone and allowing a million innocent people to die is a better moral/ethical choice than to torture that someone and save those million people.
I'm VERY much waiting for your response.
 
Goobieman said:
Reallly...
OK - lay out the moral/ethical argument that leads to the conclusion that to not torture someone and allowing a million innocent people to die is a better moral/ethical choice than to torture that someone and save those million people.
I'm VERY much waiting for your response.
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I've had enough of your dancing and shuffling around for one month Goob.....suffice it to say, you cannot teach values and ethics to people who thing that torture is ever an option. Sorry.
 
Goobieman said:
Reallly...
OK - lay out the moral/ethical argument that leads to the conclusion that to not torture someone and allowing a million innocent people to die is a better moral/ethical choice than to torture that someone and save those million people.
I'm VERY much waiting for your response.
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MO, it doesn't have to be a large number, just one. Waterboarding isn't torture if you compare it to what say the Japanese did to us during WWII.
 
RightinNYC said:
So the 70% of people who think that torture IS an option are bereft of values and ethics? Interesting.
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Thank you for that link,, Right. It would be interesting to know what these respondents think is torture. For instance, waterboarding. I think it's just fine. But pulling out fingernails, cutting off body parts....well, that's another kettle of fish. I could not support that.
 
MaggieD said:
Thank you for that link,, Right. It would be interesting to know what these respondents think is torture. For instance, waterboarding. I think it's just fine. But pulling out fingernails, cutting off body parts....well, that's another kettle of fish. I could not support that.
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Even if doing so would stop a nuclear detonation in NYC?
 
Goobieman said:
Even if doing so would stop a nuclear detonation in NYC?
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That's a loaded question, Goobie. And that is exactly the reason we have people who do the jobs that we would/could never do. If it were me having to do the deed, I couldn't do it. There are noble reasons to die.

Edit: I also have to say that one could never know the answer to that question until put in the position.
 
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MaggieD said:
That's a loaded question, Goobie.
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I really don't think so, especially in that it is nowhere near outside the realm of possibility,

There are noble reasons to die.
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Assume you are President, and decide to let the nuke go off rather than torture a handfull of terrorists.
How do you explain your decision to the American people, and how long do you think you have before you're shot?

Edit: I also have to say that one could never know the answer to that question until put in the position.
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I do. In less than a heartbeat.
 
yup. if a terrorist is willing to utilize nuclear weaponry against a noncombatant city, then they give up their rights to humane treatment. the laws of war are there to make war more humane; the assumption is that both belligerents will obey them. if one tosses them away in order to murder more; he cannot claim their protection when captured.
 
Viktyr Korimir said:
Extreme situations are why we have policy in the first place.
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Disagreed. Policy is based on assumptions about conditions; when those assumptions are no longer valid, the policy does not apply.

For example: There is a "Rules Is Rules" email floating around with a series of photos of a train which developed a hot box (burned out bearing in one of the wheels). Policy is to stop the train immediately, and railroad HQ insisted that the policy be followed in spite of the crew's recommendation to move forward because the train was sitting on top of a wooden trestle. Policy was followed, the trestle caught fire; trestle, train and cargo were all lost.
 
Resist the gov. said:
I would say that in this case that is a poor excuse because i highly doubt torturing detainees has saved any American lives nor have i seen any evidence of this. not to mention that i do not believe terrorism to be that big of a threat since the media has totally blown it out of proportion , and when you talk to returning soldiers this is evident.
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It depends on what you consider a threat.
 
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Anybody know where to get estimates on total number of active armed jihadists on the globe? I remember a source that cited the US govt put it in the thousands. Possibly not even over 4-5 digits. Active terrorists infiltrating foreign territories is remarkably lower, too.
 
SE102 said:
Anybody know where to get estimates on total number of active armed jihadists on the globe? I remember a source that cited the US govt put it in the thousands. Possibly not even over 4-5 digits. Active terrorists infiltrating foreign territories is remarkably lower, too.
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Numbers aren't the problem.
 
SE102 said:
Oh... what is the problem then...? :ssst:
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The immature smiley face suggests that you are prepared to engage in another drunken display, but I'm going to take a chance that you are going to behave this time and play nice....


How many did it take to screw up a UN mission in Somalia? How many did it take to blow up embassies? A military barracks? A military ship? How many on 9/11? Not many. The point is that since the era of independence in the Middle East, the amount of religious extremist organizations have been exponentially growing. What people are not usually aware of is that, despite their preached hatred towards the West, an overwhelming amount of their violence is directed towards their fellow Muslim. However, our willingness to ignore these groups one attack after another has resulted into one of the most devistating terrorist attack in history (9-11). 9-11 was their way of forcing us to pay them attention and given how every attack since 1993 has been worse than the last, there was no reason to believe that 9-11 would be the last.

The problem is not so much the individual numbers. It is the mass organizations that have graduated into international terrorism with support bases inside the failing civilization of the Middle East and inside areas of Europe. Al-Queda (merely one among hundreds) have based themselves in Sudan, then Afghanistan, tried to in Iraq, and now in Pakistan. With their locations in Asia and Africa wrecked, they seek the sea of Islamic radicalism too ignorant to rise above their prescriptions for safety. Their international weapons of choice have been air planes. Given half a chance, a dirty nuclear bomb would be the ultimate weapon for their unwinnable religious campaign. You see, they (meaning the intelligent ones) have no illusions of victory. They merely wish to wage the war. With Pakistan possessing nuclear bombs, Iran seeking nuclear bombs, and Arab governments looking to keep up, we are looking at a probably Cold War in the Middle East. Launching will not be the problem here. Merely handing one over to a terrorist organization for delivery will do. People may say, "Let them blow each other up!" But mushroom clouds tend to cross borders and regions. And how much better would these zealots have served God if instead of a couple planes in New York they had a bomb? The world's technology has gotten far too deadly for us to keep ignoring failing regions full of terrorist organizations who can't even keep their complaints straight.
 
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winston53660 said:
Sometimes laws should be broken.
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OK.. Agree.. Since we think so? I think we can all solve the overpopulated prisons problem right now: open the doors and let em out.

I mean if we support torture we should just go ahead and empty out DEATH ROW. Who cares as sometimes laws are made to be broken. YHeeee Hawww!

I think I am gonna mosey on down to the Wal-Mart and get me some beer, flat screeen tv and snacks. Cause I need it.
 
cpwill said:
so - unless you don't value honesty - you are willing to violate your principles.



no, it's not; what we are discussing here is a matter of competing values. no one is claiming that torture is a moral positive, or even morally neutral.



i'm aware of that, more aware i think than you are. you've never had to help provide medical aid to a torture victim. (well. 'victim'. more like counter-recipient.) someone needs to keep reminding you guys that in some cases the alternative is lots of dead children. murdered children. and someone needs to keep reminding you that as far as ethics are concerned, you are just as responsible for the results of your inaction as you are for the result of your action.
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Funny how some think it's okay to lie to save a child, yet stop short of torture to save one. I guess there is a limit to how much they value children.
 
Goobieman said:
Its not a false dichotomy, it folllows from a situational given.
The statement is not made in the context of tortuing all terrorist everywhere on the chance thatthey might know about such a thing, but specific terrorists in a specific situation where they do.
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It is false dichotomy since the scenario given has only two allowed answers. Torture the terrorist or allow NYC to blow up. It assumes there are no other valid methods by which NYC can be prevented from being nuked. That's what makes it false dichotomy. Perhaps there are many other methods to do so. There are a lot of assumptions made in the "Torture a terrorist or NYC blows up" false dichotomy including that the authorities have a terrorist with pertinent information on the disarming of the bomb in question, that there is no other way to disarm the bomb, that you can get reliable information from said terrorist under duress, etc. It's not enough to make generalized torture policy off of. How many innocent people get tortured? How much viable information comes out of torture? Of course we most likely would never have access to the full statistics as I'm sure much of it is classified. Still the point remains. There are well too many uncertainties involved with any actual terrorist case and the situations under which the false dichotomy is presented is one of low probability.
 
I forget the context, but I think I was being picky and objecting that the torture could fail in addition to objecting to context.
 
Ikari said:
It is false dichotomy since the scenario given has only two allowed answers. Torture the terrorist or allow NYC to blow up. It assumes there are no other valid methods by which NYC can be prevented from being nuked. That's what makes it false dichotomy. Perhaps there are many other methods to do so.
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okay, but now you are ignoring probabilities.

waterboard the prisoner: 98% chance he will tell you in time

pretty-please the prisoner: 1% chance he will tell you in time

offer to bribe the prisoner: 5% chance he will tell you in time

search NYC: 5% chance of finding it, with a 0.5% chance of finding and disarming it

search NYC while ordering an evacuation: 2.5% chance of finding the bomb, 100% chance of mass-panic, riots, killings, etc


nobody who actually takes seriously defending the lives, liberty, and property of the American people is going to refuse to waterboard a terrorist on those odds.

It's not enough to make generalized torture policy off of.
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that is certainly true. but we are not talking about general policy; we are talking about specialty cases.
 
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